At present a drive approx 11 metres long leads up a slight incline up from the road to a pair of gates to an old coachouse. 

We have two cars, an old Audi which is waiting for a new clutch and another car which we use daily. This second car is quite new and supllied by Motability and we have to look after it under the terms of the lease. There are a number of old beech trees on one side of the drive and these are home to several pairs of Wood Pigeons. Unfortunately these pigeons produce large quantities of pigeon poo which lands on the cars below. I do not want to shoot these as they pair for life & it would be bad to kill one and then not be able to shoot it’s mate. Although we wash the main car most days the pigeon poo is acidic and damages the paintwork. 

The trees are all listed and we can’t (and don’t want to) cut them down so despite Craig cutting bits off there is only one practical option and that is not to park this new car under them.

The drive lies at a level which is about half a metre lower than the garden on one side and so to form a new parking place we have to lower some of this area and use the soil to build up the height of another area which has sunk lower over the years. 

The area we need to lower and which will form the new parking place is full of shrubs but these do not have to be kept. They are not huge but they will have roots which means that some kind of machine will be needed to dig the area up. 

The area where the dug up soil will go has some patchy grass on it and we want to try to save some of this. The idea then is to scrape off say 6-10 cm of this grass in strips and put it to one side. Then lay the soil from the new parking area down and lay the scraped up turf on it the best we can.

The existing drive is just soil that has been compressed over the years. We can’t afford to pave this in any way and that would not work anyway as the beech tree roots would push it up in places. Some of these roots have come to the surface over the years and although I have planed the top off  some of them I think I will ask Craig to bring along his grinding machine and ask him to grind some of them down. 

As I said, the drive slopes down to the road and we want to cover it and the new parking area in slate chippings which are not too expensive. To stop them all sliding down into the road you can get this plastic mesh with hexagonal pockets which captures some of the slate and it becomes invisible. At the bottom of the drive I want to copy an idea used in a house further down the road. This is to lay some granite setts at the bottom of the drive next to the pavement to make a barrier to the bits of slate. Also, over time the car tyres will compress the slate chippings. I do not want to hire/use a tamper as slate is quite soft and we will turn a lot to dust.

As regards the project once we have met we can discuss how much you want to do in helping. At first it is reasonably simple – that is to dig out an area next to the existing drive and move the soil over. Then we can flatten out the new area ready for laying some of this mesh stuff. I will need a hand laying this mesh and also spreading out a few tons of slate chips over the existing drive and the new wider one.

The dimensions are on the plan but if it is not clear – the existing drive is 11 metres long and the new wider bit we are going to make is 4m wide by 6m long. I am not exactly sure how deep the soil is on this new bit but it quite a bit less than half a metre deep.

For you the whole thing is a hard one to call – it is best to do it on a suck and see basis ….